National

Urgent Appeal for Muzaffarnagar Riot Victims

The Milli Gazette Online

Published Online: Sep 16, 2013

The communal violence against the Muslim community in Muzaffarnagar district and adjoining areas since 27 August has taken its heavy toll. About 50 persons have been killed, thousands of homes have been looted and burnt and some 50,000 people have fled their villages and are now sheltered in madrasas, schools and other places while some gone to their relatives in other villages.

According to our reports, bodies are lying in villages which are still inaccessible due to curfew or fear or the marauding mobs. These people had to flee their villages as mobs came to attack them. Dozens of villages have since been reduced to ashes. Besides various town areas, at least two dozen villages were attacked by mobs incited by RSS-BJP-VHP goons while the police, local and state administration stood by silently.

A relief camp at Budhana

Though violence has abated belatedly due to some government action and curfew, attacks and burning of villages continues until now and so continues the streams of the uprooted who are moving to safer places and taking refuge in madrasas, schools and in Muslim-majority villages.

This is the first time in UP that rural areas too have been targeted and Gujarat-like riots have been attempted here to uproot and marginalise Muslims. Because of continuing curfew, a clear assessment is still not possible but according to our information, there are 10,000 uprooted persons in Jola village, 4000 in Shahpur village, 250 are housed in the Madrasa Gulzar Muhammadi in the same village, 1,000 in Mohalla Qasaban, 125 in Jamia Arabia Imdadul Uloom in Harsoli, 10,000 in Budhana and 600 in the RJ Public school in the same village, 4500 in Loee village, 1500 in Kheda, 2500 in Mandwara, 2000 in Asaara. There are also groups in Kerana, Kandhla, Kalyanpur and Dabedi but their numbers could not be ascertained. These people had to flee their homes with their women and children at least warning and they could hardly bring anything with them. They are in urgent need of all kind of help. Their quick return to their villages is necessary because past experience of Gujarat and Assam shows that if uprooted persons do not return quickly to their homes and villages, their properties and agricultural lands are occupied by others who do not allow them to return.

JUH's Mahmood Madni visits Jhola village graves where eight person were buried including a women with her baby still clinging to her chest. Both were burnt alive by a mob

These people require urgent help to survive in their temporary camps and also to rebuild their homes which in most cases have been looted and burnt down. Your urgent and generous help will go a long way to help them survive and rebuild their lives. Our all-out help is necessary also to frustrate the communal forces’ plans which if allowed to succeed will be repeated elsewhere.

The following is an incomplete list of people killed by the rioters since 27 August 2013, according information collected by Jamiat Ulama-e Hind (Mahmood Madni) upto noon, 11 September 2013. More bodies are being discovered in fields and from burnt houses etc.:

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